


in the bleak midwinter

by brideshead_regurgitated



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28381713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brideshead_regurgitated/pseuds/brideshead_regurgitated
Summary: December. The rain is whispering against the windowpanes and the war is over - not for people like them but, thank heavens, over. They've known each other for years and every word and action is a source of dilation and deferral, a declaration of love or the next best thing.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 5





	in the bleak midwinter

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd.

The world outside has been reduced to an infinite expanse of mist that started to ascend the moment he stepped out of his car, veterinary bag in is hand, all but slamming the car door behind him, and started walking on the wet gravel driveway to the main door with his hand already half-raised, ready to knock. Now, darkness has become the universe and the small and uneven country road that meanders itself across a sea of grass, the ground as hard as iron, amidst the naked trees that tower themselves against the sky, is now relatively useless. Vision impaired by the mist that at the beginning of the evening appeared silver and with an exact eye or the eye of an artist, with streaks of warmer colours and delicate reflections of dark shadows, ten-foot-high or more and impenetrable. The dark elms, the small brick walls on the sideway, with their patches of moss and ruined and crumbling mortar, the hedgerows, the ancient place of worship with its distinctive bell tower, and the milestones all hidden, swallowed up, disappearing until morning. 

Trying to drive back would be a nuisance: a perfectly logical explanation for Castiel's desire not to leave, for this evening not to come to an end, for the last moments to stretch themselves towards infinity and beyond, company lasting for the rest of his life.

There is talk of snow too. People have spent the last couple of days trying to agree on whether it will be there in the morning or before the end of the week. Either way, such a prediction is an exactitude, the air already smells of frost and snow, but for now, the only thing that is whispering against the window panes is the drizzle of rain - droplets of water, barely visible, running down the glass panels, landing on the windowsill beneath them. It’s easy to imagine their continuing journey towards the ground: on the edge, falling down onto the grass and pavement, adding up to the puddles on the grass. 

The weather too contributes in the creation of a microcosm: if Castiel were at home, then the streets would be found empty and all the houses would have light filtering through the drawn curtains, silence and immobility, the end of the day, people getting ready to go to sleep or taking advantage of the quietness to be alone with their thoughts for another five minutes - sitting in their armchairs with a book, or the day's crosswords, a glass of something as their only company. But he isn't home and there's something about Dean's cottage, away from everything and everyone, if only at night, that makes it feel like a safe space, a different place, a place that likes him as much as he likes it. Warm and welcoming, with its heath fire and ugly tapestry, with the wooden bench that is the only dreg of Dean's job as a glassblower. A time long gone, though Castiel remembers all the many a thousand evenings spent in Dean's company, watching him work - the concentration on Dean's face, his fingers moving skillfully and with care, with infinite patience, to create something new. Hands with a new purpose, creating something rather than destroying it.

Evenings spent sitting in mutual and comfortable silence, away from the usual worries and the familiar and overwhelming sense of loneliness. It's a place crammed with memories, memories that always overshadowed what came before the beginning of their mutual acquaintance, eclipsing some of the horrors of their lives or making them feel irrelevant in light of each other's company. They understood each other long before the word friend was first uttered with a certain surprise as if neither of them had ever really thought about it as if neither of them had ever really had a real and proper friend before, someone to last their whole lives. At the time, it felt as if the entire world had conspired to make their paths cross, pushed together like in a carpenter's vice, quietly and steadily towards each other, resistance futile, not that there had been much resistance, to begin with. There had always been such a peculiar intensity to it all, an unexpected gravity, dynamics and feelings that at the time were enough to make someone believe in something - romantic intellectualism ripped straight from the ancients, from Plato's _The Symposium_. What a surprise, how comforting that the Greek _understood_ and didn't care. Life mediated by literature, a means of self-discovery to be taken advantage of from a safe distance without exposing oneself or showing oneself to be vulnerable.

"Still no change," says Dean as he comes back inside. The door closes behind him and the large and rusty black hinges creak at the sudden movement. The sudden noise, on the verge of being unpleasant, is enough to wake Dean's dog up who looks up only to discover her owner to be the only intruder.

"No use going back in this weather," Dean goes on. "How's she doing?"

"Well as are the pups. I'm glad that there were no further complications."

"Thank you for coming, Cas. I mean it."

"You're welcome." Castiel pauses and looks away. He stretches out his hand and gently pets Dean's dog, checking on her newborns for any sign of distress only to find them peacefully asleep, close to their mother. "I should go. Head back. Jack-"

"Cas, you're more use to Jack alive than you are if you're dead in a ditch," Dean cuts him off. "Listen, you can stay the night. You'll drive back first thing in the morning. I'll take the sofa and you can take the bed."

"No, The sofa will do. Or a chair," says Castiel flatly. "I don't sleep much anyway."

Not with the nightmares haunting him as soon as he closes his eyes - the whistling noise like that of a speed train only faster, the tearing sound like calico getting louder. The nights are unsparing no matter how good the days go. The nights feel like being stuck in a quagmire with no strength to do anything but lying there staring at the ceiling as if memories could be avoided by being as still and silent as possible. The war has been over for years but not for people like him, or maybe for people like him too but not for him. Never for him. And he sees himself in the horrific wasteland, amidst the mud and the dirt, under the rain and the frigid cold, his whole body shaking and his sanity slipping. And all that guilt. 

"Busy day tomorrow?" asks Dean.

"A donkey, so you can easily imagine Jack's delight. And a cow that ate some paint not three days ago." He pauses. "Talking of Jack, you know that he looks up at you?"

"Can't see why. I'm not exactly a role model."

"That's not true," Castiel replies in earnest. He smiles sheepishly, his cheeks flushed and his heart pounding in his chest, looking away from Dean. Then, changing the subject too quickly, he adds, "What are you going to do with the pups?"

"I already had some requests. I'm going to keep the first one, name him Miracle."

"You're terribly soft, you know that?"

"I'm just they all made it, that's all. I'd say she's too old for her first litter, but she simply had to go whoring around at the ripe age of six," Dean jokes.

They both laugh at something that perhaps wasn't so hilarious, to begin with. It's a million of noises exploding at once, genuine laughter bubbling up at the back of his throat and a snort coming from Dean which only makes Castiel laugh louder. The atmosphere softens, less tense than at the beginning of the evening, he doesn't dare to move so as not to alter it or change the moment irrevocably. The bowl of hot water is still beside him and he should probably help cleaning up, put it away, compensating for the place to stay for the night. It's an awareness, a fact, louder and louder, battling against his unwillingness to do anything but sit there basking in his own happiness.

Dean grabs the poker by the fireside and moves the wood around, paying attention not to extinguish the fire. For a moment it feels as if it won't work, but then, suddenly, the flames start to crackle and blaze again, growing in size and flooding the room with golden light. 

Shadows dancing, Castiel looks at the spectacle of colours a little while longer. He's about to get up when Dean places his hand on his shoulder, resting it there. It's different, something about it feels different - lingering, calculated, done on purpose, anything but a mistake. Castiel tries to think of something else, tries to ignore it, but Dean's touch is gentle and grounding, all he wants to do is lean into it. Not the first nor the last time for it to happen, but he's been rather clear-headed as of late and the smallest of things turns into something exaggeratedly big.

Tentatively and with a certain degree of hesitance, he lifts his own hand and places it on top of Dean's - waiting for a reaction; for inevitable discomfort; for a misunderstanding to surface; for Dean to pull away, step back, walk away as mutual awkwardness settles between them. A sense of dread, he can picture it all too neatly and clearly, down to the smallest of details, for a moment that should come but doesn't. Instead, Dean moves his fingers a little bit, allowing their fingers to lace. A warm touch, skin resting on skin, Castiel's palm slightly sweated. He doesn't move, still waiting for a cough or abrupt words to put an end to it, a sudden withdrawal. It's odd, to sit there when he spent years telling himself this far and no further; because he _knows_ Dean; because he doesn't want to cross boundaries and make things uncomfortable; because he doesn't want to ruin whatever it is they have, whatever exists in this limbo of unacknowledged feelings and repressed desire, manifesting itself in lingering touches and stolen glances, the complete disregard for personal space, all things that fill him with hope.

From the very beginning although messier, an odd detention of the other's presence, capturing the very first moment and making it last infinitely long. Longer than necessary, distorting time itself. Silently creating a moment of exposure and education, revealing something new, influencing views and feelings, making it look different, bigger and of more importance compared to everyday life, inflated to the point that sometimes, at night, before checking on Jack one last time, it feels impossible to wrap his head around such knowledge, around his love, and the possibility that he relearned to care about the world from Dean.

Still holding Dean's hand, Castiel says, "I've been told to invite you for dinner. On the twenty-fifth. You may bring Sam, we'll be happy to have him. Jack says the more the merrier."

"I'll let him know."

"And he's doing well in the city, is he?"

"Yeah, has a reasonable chance of enjoying his life too. That's what we... my father would have wanted," he replies, removing his hands before Cas stands up. "My father was an obsessed bastard, but it seems Sammy's quite content with his life. Deserves it too."

"And what do you want, Dean?" he asks abruptly. 

The answer is easily guessed: a holiday from himself; from all the anger; from conditioning and resentment; from the ghost of his father - that angry and vengeful man still haunting his life. The words are on the tip of his tongue, he wants to speak them followed by words of reassurance and praise, perhaps, because he knows Dean and knows how Dean sees himself, but it feels wrong to speak sentences that aren't his to voice.

"What's the point of wanting, Cas? What's the point of wanting something if you cannot have it. There is-"

"What?" he asks, mouth half-opened. 

They stare at each other, standing face to face. For a moment it looks as if Dean's about to speak, but the silence prolongs itself and the words that follow sound out of place, a last-minute rebound, mere stand-ins for something else entirely. He says, "Drink?"

"Yes, why not."

"What would _you_ want, Cas? If you could have anything in the world, what would you want?" asks Dean as he pours two glasses of whiskey.

"I don't know," he lies. _You_ , Castiel wants to say. He pushes the thought back and swallows. 

"But I know what it feels like to want something you cannot have."

Dean tilts his head.

"A friend to last my whole life. It gets... lonely." He pauses. "There's Jack, but it used to- Never mind."

One day, Castiel thinks as Dean hands him his glass, he will leave or send him away and then life won't ever be the same again, the whole thing proof enough that real friends merely exist in dreams where friendships are bound to last an entire life. Dean will leave, the three words have a certain inevitability to them as the breaking point has been reached more than once, steering dangerously close to it, always on the verge of destruction. And then? Back to the realm of reality and loneliness, with the thought of Dean wriggling in, knowing that he knew him better than anyone, knowing that he could never say that how much he knows him or knew him, how much he understands or understood. And then? He would have to take it for what it is because he couldn't possibly say _please don't go, please don't leave me_ or anything like that out loud, softly, whispering it like a prayer again and again and again, his own idolatrous fancy exposed to the world. He had to accept it, not stoically but with some resignation, isn't that the moment they were always travelling to? It had to come. It would come, leaving nothing but memories of the shadows of the real thing behind, substitutions, the best next thing, a replica of something else - distant and unobtainable. 

And the beginning of it all too, grabbing Dean and dragging him away just as something went off beside them: the loud explosion and the air leaving his lungs, surrounded by bits of... and later, weeks on, the understanding that perhaps being saved had never been one of Dean's priorities. That late-night confession, darkness hiding their secrets and their own vulnerability, the flat tone and the admission to Castiel or to Dean himself of having been so fucking close. That night, in the freezing cold, in one of the dreadful huts, the whole world shaking, muddy boots and scratching their skin to wash out the blood, irritating it further, opening wounds caused by the freezing air and the frigid winter temperatures, the unsparing cold of January.

One day, Dean will leave. They are friends though in the intricacies of life it always seemed as if there was a different category, perfectly sealed off from everyone else, friends and the two of them, and in his dreams, sometimes, this odd friendship transmutes into something, gaining clarity and he allows himself to _want_ when the thought of Dean inevitably wriggles in. He loves him consciously now, with none of the evasiveness from the beginning, with more control and purpose, and less of that desperate hunger of the early days of their acquaintance. Mooning around the world, drifting, getting closer, always ending at each other's side and staying there long after the end. Hesitantly, tentatively, yielding. Sometimes he dreams of confessing it all just to lift a weight from off his shoulders.

"Dean."

Dean stretches out his hand ever so slightly, their fingers brushing against each other, curling, as they continue to look at each other. His heart soars. History in the making. Feast your eyes. Castiel feels dizzy, his heart pounding in his chest, any of the sounds and doubts that may have usually grounded him ignored.

"My- dear fellow," Dean replies, stepping forward. He places his glass back on the table, untouched, Castiel mirrors his actions - the amber liquid oscillates slightly at such a sudden movement. "Cas."

His name sounds foreign on Dean's lips, for the first time in years, altered, with a different meaning. His ears may be deceiving him because of his own wishful thinking, but the first part of that sentence! Castiel swallows. New, different and unfamiliar, what a strange and anticipated unexplored territory. He'd never dare do anything, say anything to ruin it. Impose himself and his desires and profound wishes.

The Dean's lips on his or, rather, at the corner of his mouth. Not a proper kiss, the very beginning of one, mixed with surprise and awkwardness. A kiss without a kiss, too many feelings entangled with fear, on the road of oversimplification, proper enough for it to be brushed off as a mistake. He wants more, he wants Dean, but that is forgetting himself and all his self-established boundaries. They should talk. He should be honest, tell Dean how he feels - it will either push him away or closer, no middle ground. 

Castiel's about to speak when Dean moves closer and away, he looks at him and smiles softly. Blood is rushing through his veins and his thoughts are going staccato, he cannot sort them out and whatever coherence he may find leads back to the idea of tangent closeness and possibilities. He leans in, slowly, waiting for Dean to step back in shock, giving him enough time to do so. He'd ask but doesn't trust his voice, and then his lips are on Dean's, a gentle touch at the very beginning of a scale of impropriety. Neither of them moves. There are no soft sights, no confidence, no tips of tongues playfully touching in curious exploration as movements start to become more confident. 

Daringly, he kisses Dean again, running the tip of his tongue over his lips and the kiss deepens - tenderly, languidly, gently. Kissing as the French do. Wantonly. Wet and slippery muscle against wet and slippery muscle. 

A word intruding her thoughts: home. Enclosed, safe, why be anywhere else? Why leave? 

"I should go," says Cas, breathless, his voice panic-stricken, abruptly stepping away as the full realization of his actions settles. "I'm sorry, Dean, I didn't mean to... I like you, Dean, you're decent and this is rotten- I mean, not really, it is my life, not rotten business, but-"

The words are coming out wrong. It's evasiveness at its best and more powerful as his feelings and thoughts roll and rapid, leaving him jealous of all those people who consider themselves out of touch with their own feelings in so much as to be able to speak with clarity and clear-headedness. Rotten business? He can hardly believe himself, he never called it like that before or thought about calling it such. Shame had never been his to feel: There's too much trust to fear to be reported, too much general incompetence for concrete fears. But their friendship - the most precious thing of all, carefully cultivated so linear and effortless despite the occasional arguments, despite the difficulties of their own personalities that sometimes make him believe that whatever God or fate caused their meeting, it must be having a good laugh at them. 

"Cas," says Dean, taking his hand.

"Some people would call it grotesque," he blurts out. 

"Not me."

"I'm sorry, Dean," he says, not sure what he's apologizing for.

"Don't do this, Cas." Dean pauses. "Cas, I know we had our disagreements in the past and I'm sorry, no matter how hard I try I just can't-."

"I shouldn't have said that. I don't-"

"It took me a long time. Please, stop with me," says Dean, astonishingly bursting in. "Sleep the night with me, Cas."


End file.
